Trip report - "Dreams do come true" (video complete - pg 45)

[Mary626]

We look around the marketplace some more. Looked around at all the lego people or lego animals. Jim was really hungry, but everywhere I recommended going he doesn’t think sounds good, so he decides to wait until he’s in Disneyquest and can grab something to eat at “foodquest”. We walked towards Disney Westside. All those little lizards that abound in Florida kept running out in front of us, I almost stepped on one once or twice! Everytime Jim sees a lizard he has to say “You’re a lizard, harry!” (from harry potter.. well not actually from harry potter, the real line is “you’re a wizard, harry”.. anyway).. I don’t know why but I still find it funny when he does it.

Stitch was spitting water on passerbys!

Lego people – scary!

a lego t-rex

About 3:45 we get to the front of DisneyQuest and stand around waiting to see if anyone was going to show up. Jim’s brother said he was going to come, so about 3:55 Jim calls him and finds out he’s still at epcot with Josh, Janiece, and jim’s nephew William. They had thought it was at 5. Oh well, no big deal, but Jim and I don’t want to wait around another hour obviously, so we buy our tickets (we got 10% off because we had annual passes, just fyi). We wait until 4:05 just to make sure no-one else was coming, and noone did. I was actually kind of glad, I liked the idea of exploring disneyquest for an hour by ourselves.

Jim talking to Chris on his cell phone

I had been to Disneyquest twice before and always get a kick out of the Genie in the elevator, so I was looking forward to seeing Jim’s reaction to it. We get in the elevator, and a group of about 7 other people come in, and the elevator closes and the genie appears. Then we hear BREEEEP “Samantha where you at?!” on one of those Nextel – walkie-talkie things. I hope I don’t offend anyone here, but I can’t stand those things! If you want to talk to someone, call them!!!! So we couldn’t hear a word being said thanks to Samantha and her friend’s loud staticy walkie-talkie conversation!! So courteous of them.

You exit the elevators and it takes you to “Venture Port” - the center of DisneyQuest, with 4 different “portals” that each take you to a different stair-case to a different “zone”, like the replay zone, the explore zone, the create a zone, and the “score zone”. It can be kind of confusing to navigate once you leave this central portal. We take the portal that leads to Foodquest/Score Zone.

They have a few different stations, some with burgers and dogs, others with salads, pasta, pizza, etc, and they have a “Wonderland Cheese-cake factory express” up one level. Jim was so hungry he just ordered at the first station he got to, and ordered nachos with cheese. He skipped out on earl of sandwhich just to get some nacho’s and cheese, very healthy. Oh well. We find a seat in the wonderland factory – they have cutely shaped chairs and some other alice-in-wonderland themed furniture here and there, and you can sit and use the computers that had internet access on them. It’s a cute little place to eat. Jim eats his nacho’s while I used the computer. They had a screen where you can send some silly e-mail postcards to your friends, so I followed the Cheshire Cat’s prompts to “create a post-card”, and sent one to one of jim’s friends who couldn’t make it to the wedding (jim’s best friend and first choice for best man – but he had a presentation to give at his job… stupid job), and one to one of my friends that couldn’t make it. The post-card had a bunch of drop boxes that you could pick choices from to “fill in the blanks” and create a silly email, kind of like the old ad-lib games.

One of them ended up saying:
“here we are taking lots of photos and having the FBI follow us. We spent stacks of Disney Dollars with the family and evading the FBI. Did you know four out of five dentists came from zoos all over the world? We can’t wait till tomorrow to show you all 2000 of our pictures. Wish you were here! Your special friends”

I think the “2000 pictures” part was supposed to be funny because it seems like a ridiculous amount of photos, but I actually did come home with 3,500 digital pictures!

Jim finishes his nacho’s and we both finish off his rice krispy concoction. He then decides to check the internet to see if there’s any news on the new superman movie that he’s currently obsessed with. No news, so he leaves up a picture of the superman symbol on the computer and we look to find our first game to play.

Jim ordering some healthy nacho’s and cheese

our postcard

 

[Mary626]

We leave FoodQuest and are in the “Score Zone”. The first game we see is an air-hockey table so we decide to play that. Yes that’s something we could do in California or anywhere else, and yes there are a bunch of virtual reality games we could be trying instead, but we wanted to play air hockey . We were really just taking it easy and not worrying about what we played or didn’t play It was a fun game or air hockey, even though Jim won 7-4.

After air hockey, we went down one more level to the “Replay Zone” and I saw they had Joust there. I loved Joust on the Atari! What could be more fun then running around on an ostrich trying to bop your friend’s ostrich on the head?

Me enjoying my jousting

I told jim “you know... life is a lot like the game of joust.. just flapping your wings trying to head in a direction without getting bopped on the head by all your friends. Or something like that”

We have a version of joust on our xbox, that I always beat Jim at, but this time Jim won again, darnit!! Oh well, maybe it was nerves because the wedding was the next morning, yeah that must be it. Actually I was starting to get nervous. Every time I thought about how late it was getting and that I was getting married in the morning, I would get butterflies in my stomach. I tried not to think about it and just enjoy my time at DisneyQuest with Jim.


We walked around and I wasn’t sure which level we were on, but there was a human-pin-ball-machine game thing that looked kind of interesting, so we decided to try it. It was a good crowd-level that day, we didn’t have to wait long in line for anything while we were there. I had no idea what was going on during the human pinball game. You’re on this thing and you kind of lean it forward or backwards to keep your pinball afloat.

I just looked it up, it is called “the mighty ducks pinball slam – become a lifesized pinball as you bounce off bumpers and flippers to score points to become the mightiest duck of all!” Okay, I still had no idea what was going on and have no idea what I ranked or how badly I did. Jim wasn’t too sure either.

We played a little Mario-Kart. It was cute because they take a picture of your face and add a few embellishments to it and use that as the avatar for your car. So as I was racing Jim, I would see his car with a weird picture of his face above it. I can play this game at home but sometimes certain Arcade games just make my eyes water terribly. My eyes kept watering up so I wasn’t doing too good. Jim won again.

We moved on and found “Buzz Lightyear’s Astroblasters” – which looked like Bumper Cars with cannonballs attached. I had no idea how much fun this ride would be, we LOVED this ride!! One of my favorite video games I play at home all the time is “Mario Kart – Double Dash”, and this game reminded me of a live-action version of this game. There are 2 people per Bumper Car, one person is the designated driver, the other is the shooter. The driver has to run over some “cannon-balls”, and the cannonball appears underneath your seat. Then the shooter has to pick up the cannonball, load it into the “blaster-cannon”, aim for another cart and shoot!! If you hit the other kart in the right spot, their car would become disabled and spin around in circles for 10 seconds. It was so much fun! Jim was the driver and I was the shooter, we both got really really into it! I loved this game!!

We were going to play it again but decided to try some other stuff first and come back to it. We went down to the first “Explore Level”and saw that there was no line for the Virtual reality jungle cruise, so we board our raft and grab our paddles. This game was a lot of fun too! It actually immerses you into the game so you feel like you’re going down rapids or falling down water-falls as you try to steer your boat in the right direction. Jim sat in the front and I sat in the back, not sure why we didn’t sit together. But since I was in back I got to watch Jim play and he was totally rubbernecking and not paddling. I was like “jim stop looking at the pretty dinosaurs and paddle!!” and then I’d be paddling forward as he was paddling backwards. Well he might be good at air-hockey and Joust, but I won’t be getting into a canoe or other sea-faring vessel with him anytime soon. And he was an eagle scout? I kept teasing him about it after we got out of the raft.

Pretty soon after that Chris calls Jim and tells them they are in DisneyQuest. It was about 5:30 at that point. They come down and meet us at the first level. It was Chris, Josh & Janiece and their baby Gracie, and Jim’s nephew William. William was wearing the “Mary & Jim’s wedding” t-shirt, how cute! Since there was no line, Chris & William play the jungle cruise while Josh & Janiece went to use the restroom. When they came back, me and Jim watched Gracie while they all did the jungle cruise ride again. Josh seemed to be very serious about it and kept giving directions for which direction to paddle. It was funny to watch.

Chris & William about to embark on a dangerous jungle cruise

Jim watching Gracie

Josh captaining the raft

After that, we decided to try out “Pirates of the Caribbean – search for buccaneer gold”. Josh watched Gracie while everyone else got on board (I had never done it before and wanted to try it out). We put on our virtual reality headpiece and the cast member asks which one of us wants to steer the ship while the rest of us shot our cannons. Nobody volunteered so he asks 11 year old William if he wanted to be the captain, and William was like “no I want to fire at people!”, so Jim volunteers to steer. You go in a really small room and are on what’s like a bow of the ship, and there is a big wooden steering wheel and 6 cannons that you can pull the string to shoot. A skeleton-pirate-captain comes and explains the directions, the 3-d effects were pretty cool. Then we’re on the open seas and we have to fire at the dozens of other pirate ships around us while Jim tries to steer us towards ships or places that have gold in them. At one point a giant sea monster appears, and everyone’s like “shoot left shoot to the left!!” and we all switch cannons, then the monster goes to the right of the ship and we all have to switch cannons again. It was a lot of fun and everyone got really into it! When we were done we did a “baby swap”, and Chris watched Gracie while Josh gets to play, so we all get to play again. It was a great game to play for a group our size.

Everyone wanted to try Buzz Lightyear’s Astroblasters since they hadn’t done it yet so we go back up to the Replay level. Since Jim and I had already played, I told everyone else to go play while we watched Gracie. Gracie was being really cute and kept walking towards the card-board cut-outs of the little green aliens from Toy Story, it was cute. They finished up their game and took Gracie, so then Jim & I played against Chris & William. This time we decided to aim for Chris & William so we didn’t do as well, but still had a great time. We switched positions, this time I was driver and Jim was the shooter. I thought I did a much better job when I was the shooter and Jim was the driver. And being the shooter was much more fun! We got Chris & William at least one time really good and saw them go spinning around, it was so much fun

Gracie wanting to say hello to the aliens

Me and jim at disneyquest

William picking buzz lightyear’s nose

Jim picking buzz lightyear’s nose

After that we all played some more arcade games, like centipede, pacman, and TRON, etc. Then we saw that the Mario-Kart game was free again, so Jim, Chris, Josh, and William all get a seat. For the avatar picture this time, Josh decides to use a picture of Gracie for his cart and it looked a little freaky but was funny! I watched them play for a while, Josh came in first so we got to see Gracie’s avatar pic doing the victory lap. Fun game! It was around 6:30 then, it was getting late and I kept trying not to think about the next day or else I would get butterflies in my stomach.

Everyone playing arcade games

the boys playing Mario-kart

Gracie’s avatar on the top left, jim’s on the bottom left corner

Get ‘em, Jim!

a close-up of Jim’s avatar

 

[Mary626]

They all decided to go find something to eat, so Jim and I go to a virtual reality ride called “Invasion! An ExtraTERRORestrial alien encounter”. It’s a 360 degree virtual reality game. The graphics pretty much suck though, and I didn’t really understand who we were supposed to be shooting. The constant flickering of the graphics started really hurting my eyes, and all of a sudden my eyes just completely tear up and won’t stop. I don’t know why some virtual reality rides do that to me and others don’t, it was really bad though. We get out and I look like I’ve been bawling, and it took a while for my eyes to stop watering. So much for going on Aladdin’s magic carpet virtual reality ride – I think I’ve had enough virtual reality rides for the day. Jim said he liked the ride though. Don’t know why my eyes are so sensitive, especially since he’s the one who had laser eye surgery!

Jim standing by a model of the ship we were piloting

We head to the “Create Zone” for a change of pace. The first thing we see when we get there is “Sid’s Create-a-Toy”. I tell Jim to do it since that day was more for him then for me, so he gets to work picking a body, 2 legs, 2 arms, and a head from a variety of different toy parts on the computer screen. My contribution was the head though. I said “get the cabbage patch head!” and when he tried to pick another head I was like “I want the cabbage patch head!” So I guess it was a joint effort. I thought his toy was cute, so we decide to go buy our creation.

Jim creating his toy

We tell the lady which toy was ours and she goes to find the parts for it. It was taking a while so I told Jim I would wait and he could go do something else, so he goes to the Animation Academy five feet away and learns how to draw Goofy from the art teacher lady. The cast member found the toy parts and told me to make sure all the parts fit. I had a little bit of trouble putting in the elephant legs so she kindly helped me out. She notices my Magic Wishes button and congratulates me and asks when the wedding was. I told her it was the next morning. Oh my god it was the next morning! There go those butterflies again.
She was like “tomorrow, really?? Are you nervous?” I was like “yeah, every time I think about it I get butterflies in my stomach”. She wished me goodluck and congratulations again. For some reason that was when it started to sink in that I was actually getting married in the morning. Wow everything had gone by so fast, I couldn’t believe it was actually here. For a while I just didn’t think it would EVER get here and now it was coming up so quickly.


I watched Jim try his hand at drawing Goofy. I thought he was doing really good but he didn’t think so. Josh came by and asked if we could watch William for a while. I took William over to the “living easels” and watched him create a pretty macabre scene of skulls and skeleton dogs running around a haunted house. Jim was still doing the animation academy, so I took William over to the create-a-toy and watched him create his own toy, I told him I would buy it for him. Josh had over-heard me and was like “don’t buy it for him.. William do you really want a toy?” and he was like “yes!”. I was like “it’s okay I’ll buy him the toy it’s just ten bucks”. Jim finished up his animation, I asked him how it went and he said he erased it and left before the “class” was done. Darnit Jim I wanted to see your Goofy!!

Our child!

Jim is so proud

Jim trying to draw Goofy

William creating a scary “living easel”

William finishes making his toy and we go get it and put it together. He had chosen the same body-type as Jim’s, so we decided that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. They were just right for each other! William said to Jim “your toys a girl!” and I chimed in “yeah Jim, yours is a girly toy!”

William’s toy/jim’s toy’s boyfriend

Jim wanted to do Cyberspace Mountain with me, where you design your own rollercoaster and then ride it in a simulator. But since were there by ourselves with William I told him to take William on it, I’ve done it before. So I sat by the giant pinnochio head and waited for them for a while. I did lose a few dollars on the toy-grabber machines that I never win on though, but then gave up and decided to save my money.

Jim and William came out of cyberspace with such incredible looks on their faces, it was so cute!! Jim was like “that was so cool I didn’t know it actually went upside down, we were screaming the whole time!”. I wish we had bought the DVD of them that they record while they were riding the simulator. Ah well.

Where I sat, and to the right, where I wasted money

Where Jim & William were

It was almost 8 o’clock. We had been there 4 hours already, wow! I was getting tired and thought we better head back pretty soon, so we went to find Josh & Janiece so they could watch William and we could go back to the Yacht Club and prepare for the morning.

 

[Mary626]

We had a hard time finding them and we both had shoddy reception, so as we walked around looking for them we played a few games here and there. One game that was a lot of fun and just too cute was this Disney racer game – where you have to spin this wheel as quickly as you can to get your character to ride his bike and race the other characters. I played as Minnie and beat Jim and William, but the “computer” won each time. So I would lose to Goofy and then Goofy would bike around one more time doing his victory lap, wow way to rub it in, Goofy, darn show-off!

I tried playing whack-a –mole (or in this case, whack-an-alien) but it wasn’t working properly. Stupid thing, I wanted to whack a mole! Jim kept looking for Josh & Janiece or Chris but couldn’t find them (it was a confusing place to navigate with many hidden corners to it). William played some ski-ball and some star wars pod-racer, and then Jim finally finds everyone. It was about 8:30 and we say goodbye to everyone and tell them we’d see them in the morning.

Jim and I both agreed that DisneyQuest was just SO MUCH fun, and we both will definitely go back next time we’re at WDW.




We head to the bus stop and wait about 15 minutes for the next bus. While we’re waiting we start talking about the next morning, and Jim says “It’s going to be hard to wait to kiss you until they tell me to”. I was like awwwwww!!!!!! We start joking about it being our “last night of freedom” and all the girls Jim was going to hook up with that night before the wedding. I was telling him about the butterflies in my stomach and he asked what I was nervous about. I wasn’t really nervous about anything, I think it was just that it was finally here, the day that I’ve been thinking about and planning every day for at least the past year. It was so built up in my mind and I just had no idea how it would actually pan out. That and I was still nervous about how I would look. I was wearing a strapless dress (he didn’t know that at the time) – but I was worried about how my arms might look – I never even wore sleeveless shirts out in public and there I was wearing a sleeveless dress. It was the prettiest dress I tried on, I thought, but now I was nervous about it and wished I had picked something with sleeves. That and all the attention that would be focused on me all day,, I told Jim I was okay doing presentations and things, but tomorrow was going to be a prolonged “all eyes on mary” kind of a day. Jim said “it’s not likely that all eyes will be on you for the full 8 hours – sometimes they’ll be looking at their food”. “well there will probably be at least one pair of eyes on me at any given time” I said.

Around 8:45 we get on our bus and get to the hotel around 9. We both were really tired but had a lot to prepare before Jim left. He was going to be going to sleep in his Best Man’s room and my mom was going to come sleep in my room for the night.

We ran into Jenny in the hallway at our hotel and she was wearing the same shirt as Jim – how funny!

We get to our hotel room and while Jim is in the bathroom I pick up the phone to call my mother’s room, but I hear somebody’s voice on the phone, but it sounded kind of distant and staticy. How weird. I hang up and pick it up again and can vaguely hear some guy and he sounds like he’s ordering food. I figure maybe it was the person one room over and maybe the rooms share a split phone line or something, so I forget about it and use my cell phone

I call my mom and tell her Jim & I were going to order and eat room service and I would call her when we were done, and she says no rush just to call her whenever.

Jim gets out and I tell him about the phone thing and he’s like “oh weird”. We order some room service and I start preparing everything for the next morning. Since Jim was sleeping in Matt’s room that night, I was packing an overnight bag for him and trying not to forget anything important like his razor or deoderant or something. I had prepared a bag of things he might need in advance , so I secretly wrote him a little note about how much I loved him and couldn’t wait to be his wife, and put it in with his stuff

I went over a few things with him that were important, like not to forget to bring the marriage license with him, no matter what he did he couldn’t forget that! I gave him some pre-filled tip envelopes for some of the vendors and told him he might want to give them to Corey to take care of.

I was getting pretty tired so I kept running through everything in my head to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

Around 10:30, our room service comes and the lady who delivered it brings it in and makes the table all pretty. She brings in our food, some small chicken quesadillas and a bowl of new England clam chowder.

Our room service

she goes back out and says she had “one more thing”, and comes back in carrying 2 plates of the most delicious looking chocolate covered strawberries I’d seen!

Delicious strawberries!

almost too pretty too eat!

At first I thought it was courtesy of the hotel, but they were from Jim, how sweet! Jim tells me he had ordered them the first day we checked-in, and that they were supposed to be there when we got back to the hotel. Since they weren’t there, he had used the phone in the bathroom to call the front desk and ask where they were. They had completely lost his order so they had to put a rush on them. So that’s who I heard on the phone line! I thought he had sounded familiar lol. And I had wondered earlier why they put a hotel phone in the bathroom right next to the toilet, I guess it is there so husbands can surprise their wives with gifts . It was so sweet! He tells me he had something else for me and gives me a box.

It was a beautiful snowglobe of all the Disney princesses dancing with their princes to “So this is Love” – just beautiful! I kept saying “aww!” I couldn’t believe he had gotten me these wedding gifts, they were just perfect!! I was really happy. I loved my gifts!!

Jim’s second gift to me

My beautiful snowglobe!

Me about to eat a strawberry

We decide to take our food out on the balcony and enjoy the view. We had been pretty hungry when we got back to the hotel when we ordered the room service, but now I had a case of major butterflies in my stomach and didn’t have much of an appetite. I had one of the quesadillas and some of the soup. Had I known about the strawberries I wouldn’t have ordered the soup.. But once I ate one strawberry I had to have the rest – they were the freshest and most delicious strawberries I’d ever tasted! We talked a little and had a peaceful meal together on the balcony enjoying our view. I told him that I couldn't give him his wedding gift until sometime later next week. He really really wanted to know, but I told him I wasn't going to tell. I said "you've waited this last year without knowing, you can wait onemore week". I thought our meal on the balcony together was very romantic and was glad to have the time with him alone before we separated for the night. I felt so in love!

Jim eating a strawberry (or is he playing the harmonica in this picture?)

Our view while we ate

I wouldn’t have ordered the clam-chowder if I had known about the strawberries

After we finish eating, he takes his stuff and prepares to head to Matt’s room for the night. We had planned on sleeping separately that night for the last year but all of a sudden I don’t want him to leave. But we say goodbye and he heads to Matt’s room. I wouldn’t see him again until the moment before we said our vows!

I call my mom and she comes over to sleep in my room. I continued to prepare everything for the morning so I wouldn’t feel rushed or stressed in the morning. I put everything out that I would need – my shoes, nylons, corset, garter, etc. I was getting tired and nervous but I needed to finish preparing. My mother put these rubber gel things in my shoes and scuffed up the bottom so I wouldn’t slip. I couldn’t find the pair of white underwear I had bought specifically for the wedding day. Where were they? Weird, I remember unpacking them but couldn’t find them. After looking for them for a while, I decided just to wear a pair of blue underwear I had, nobody would be able to see through the petticoat so it didn’t’ matter what color they were, and at least blue was a little traditional too lol.
It ended up taking me a long time to finish everything I wanted to prepare, I wish we had gotten back a little earlier.

My mom gave me some very pretty nightgowns as a gift. It was midnight, it was my wedding day!! I put up my home-made door hanger on the outside of our room. I tried fixing my manicure, which was a little scuffed up. I was going to wear gloves but thought I would try to fix it anyway. I had bought a “French manicure kit” and tried to use it – but I kept screwing it up, so I decided just to take off all of my nail polish. Oh well, I tried.

Around 12:30 we both get in bed, and I had fun just talking to my mom for about an hour about this or that. There were a few love songs I wanted to listen to before my wedding day so I put on my ipod and let my mom listen to a few of them too. It was late, I didn’t fall asleep right away. Around 1:30 am, I finally fell asleep. We set 2 different alarms for about 4:15 am since the cosmetologist was coming around 5. I knew I was going to be exhausted in the morning and just hoped I had enough adrenaline in my system to get me through the day. I couldn’t believe I’d be getting married in just a few hours!!


one of my tip envelopes

my jewelry and tiara

My wedding day- door hanger!

My mom gives me a beautifully wrapped gift

some pretty night-gowns!

My last night as a “single” person. I put out all my shoes, nylons, and everything I would need in the morning and get ready for bed. I was getting married in the morning, yay!

 

[FutureAshleyDukes]

Mary, I love your trip report! Can't wait to read about the wedding day!

 

[JJClemson]

Mary, I cannot wait for your wedding day! The door hanger and envelopes you made are absolutely adorible! Such a nice touch

 

[PrincessNED]

great report

 

[heatherlynn444]

LOVE reading this, it's like I'm there too!

 

[kellyf2626]

I can't wait to hear about your wedding day!!!

 

[Mommy Poppins]

Another great installment and wonderful pictures!!! Keep it coming.

 

[Tinker74]

Wow...I've just spent all day reading this great report....
I can't wait to read all about the wedding day.
What a lovely couple you are...

 

[sarah_n_brian2006]

I cant wait to hear the rest this is beautifully done!

 

[disneyheaven]

What a beautifully written report! I love the detail and descriptions! I feel like I am right there, experiencing every moment!! Can't wait to read the rest!!!

 

[timandlesley]

All I can say is WOW! I am enjoying your trip report so much, what a magical time! Can't wait to see the wedding day. I am now wishing I could go back and get married Disney Style. Thanks for the details and pic's. LOVE IT!

 

[rocketralph]

Mary,

I noticed that you are a veteran of the Big Red Boat. Have you tried a DCL sailing aboard the Magic or Wonder yet?

 

[Tinkerbellz]

Mary,
You're killing me. I reading your trip report. I stayed up last nite until 1:30 reading. I can't wait to hear about the wedding day. I also think the pictures give the report a wonderful "family" touch. I feel like I was there too.

Keep up the good work...and Congratulations to you and Jim on beginning your lives together.

 

[Goobergal99]

I am hooked and in envy But what a great report, can't wait for the wedding. DH and I almost got married in the world but we decided that due to cost and the fact that we really wanted all the ppl closest to us to come, that we would just have a wedding in Philly and it was beautiful. However, I plan to renew our vows in Disney

 

[DisneyJen]

Congratulations Mary!!

What a wonderful trip report. Thanks so much for sharing your Magical Wedding!

 

[princessblueeyzes]

Another great installment on your tr and pictures! I am dying to read about the wedding day and how fun it was and exciting. More More More! I'm hooked.

 

[hfehr1s]

Mary~ Love the recaps -- your a great story teller, can't wait for more!!!! Congrats!!